


Broken Crown

by Ithela



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Angst, Betrayal, Child Neglect, Depression, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hela Will Give it to Him, Implied Mpreg, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Loneliness, Sad, Thor (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Thor is a Great Uncle But He Isn’t at First, Uncle-Niece Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 17:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17985611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithela/pseuds/Ithela
Summary: The day his brother dies, Thor’s heart shatters.Or:Loki is dead and a severely depressed Thor decides to change the world in the only way he can. Instead, he crowns a queen, rewrites history, and finds himself where he once started.





	Broken Crown

**Author's Note:**

> An idea I had. Sorry for the angst and any inaccuracies and typos. Loose inspiration from Broken Crown by Mumford and Sons.

The day his brother dies, Thor’s heart shatters.

His father does not awaken. His mother lies in her grief.

Heimdall tries his best.

Sif offers her heart.

But a part of Thor is broken.

He thinks about where it went wrong. What he could have done better.

And it hurts.

Hurts so bad he can barely breathe. Hurts like he’s lost a part of his limb and the blood gushes out. It splatters onto his cheeks, stains his teeth, dies his hair. Buries him. Drowns him.

(Idun says his father will not wake. Idun says his mother is lost. Idun says Loki is dead.)

But how can he be dead when he is all Thor has left? How can he be gone when his other half is here? Loki had promised him forever. Loki is his brother. And brothers do not flee.

•*•^

Loki was with child, Heimdall says.

They found a girl with the charred remains of who he was. How long she had been exposed to the elements they are not sure. Even worse, she is already a full born goddess. Not of any harmless and beneficial element as Thor had been but of Death. He supposes it makes sense, the girl had been born amidst a day of death and her disfigured body, skeleton in its lower half, paid the price. Heimdall asks what they should do with her, if she should be done away with like her two monstrous brothers. Thor almost says yes. Thinks it would be for the best given the circumstances, the girl’s unfortunate domain, her disfiguration, and the anti-Loki sentiment following the incident with the diplomat from Alfheim all those months ago and now the incident with Sif and the Warriors Three. But this girl, this nameless, worthless child, she is all he has left of Loki. And he can not bare to give her up.

Instead Thor gives Heimdall careful instructions before he even meets her. A wing of the palace, one long forgotten for a time when the Kings of Asgard had as many children as they did subjects, is opened just for her. The best seidr users and healers are called up just for her. They heal most of the damage done by the curse Odin himself placed on all those born of Loki and as a precaution, Thor asks for news of her existence to never leave Asgard. If, Thor thinks, her father is who he believes, then she will surely be killed. Loki’s daughter deserves better. She deserves better than Thor. He instructs Heimdall to hire the best caretakers for a girl such as she. He will rule, but he will keep his distance. He will love her with all his heart, but he will never approach in fear of breaking her just as he broke her father.

Heimdall asks for a name, for a title, for a supposed family.

“Name her Hela,” Thor says. “Hela of Asgard, my daughter.” For Loki had been a prince and Thor will make sure his daughter is a princess.

•*•^

Thor crowns himself king.

Traditionally, it would have been his mother following the death of the Allfather. Traditionally it would’ve been the Valkyries and High Priests and the Seidr users heralding his reign.

Tradition. Tradition. Tradition.

But tradition is dead.

He sends it away with his mother and father on a one way trip to her family in Vanaheim.

He hugs her before she leaves but she does not move. He wonders if he should tell her of Loki’s daughter, of Hela who will be his daughter, but he thinks it will only hurt her. She is already cold and hard and broken. He wonders if she will ever be happy again. If his father will ever awaken. If he’ll ever see Loki again. If he’ll ever have more than Hela.

Heimdall assures him this is for the best. Vanaheim engages in a level of seidr few on Asgard know. Perhaps they could awaken the Allfather. But even if they couldn’t, Thor must say goodbye. A new king must be crowned and with Odin alive and helpless, he is but an added weakness to Thor’s reign following the birth of Thor’s daughter. He doesn’t mention Loki and Thor wonders if he considers them weaknesses.

If Thor himself is a weakness. If Hela is a weakness.

No, he resolves. She will never be a weakness. She will be better and kinder and stronger. She will listen to the cries of those she loves. She will not laugh in their face or deride them for being too weak to fight back. Hela will understand that the world can be hard and cruel but she must not be. He will make things right with her.

•*•^

On a cloudy day, Thor places the crown of Asgard upon his head and kneels before the people around him.

He is a boy. A simple, stupid boy. He is barely a few millennia old. He can not be king. But he must.

Because his father sleeps. His brother lies dead.

His mother is broken, and Thor can not be broken. Not if Asgard is to survive this. Not if Hela is to survive this.

•*•^

Three centuries pass before he hears the whispers.

They say he must marry, that the Allfather will never awaken and the House of Bor must continue.

Thor knows this is true. He knows he was not his parents first child. He had brothers, older and now dead. By their standards he must find a queen. He must have children. But he’d always thought he’d have Loki by his side as he married his great love. Loki would hold his son, his daughter, teach them in the ways of seidr while Thor ruled alongside his bride. It was a dream he had often had. A reality he would’ve had if Thor had not been so stupid.

The court whispers the name Sif for all of three days before Thor makes it clear he will not come close to either her or the Warriors Three. He has not seen them since—and he will not start seeing them now. He remembers how they treated Loki even if he was too blind to see it then. He knows they played a part in his brother’s death and in the Hela’s orphanhood and that he can not forgive.

The girl has grown strong. She has her father’s green eyes and shape if not his black hair. She has his smile, and mischievous disposition. She is still young, but she can fight with a sword and cast spells without a word and she has light enough hair and a strong enough resemblance to a son of the House of Bor that he can lie. He can say, this is Hela, daughter of Thor.

So he does even if it is a lie.

She does not know him well. She does not call him father. She calls him Thor with a smile because a part of her remembers the days when she cried and cried and his arms rocked her to sleep. When she laughed and laughed, and Thor smiled only for her. Thor remembers those days as well. He cherishes them. She is all he has left. He was there in the nights when she fussed and fussed, there to lead her crawls and catch her when she inevitably fell. She spoke her first words to Thor, drew her first drawing of him, hugged him like he was her everything. Three centuries to his seventeen and she barely reaches his hip when she twirls into his side. Hela is light and giggles and happiness. A princess locked in the tower. And though she is little, she is fierce, due for a growth spurt anytime soon, married a long, long, long while in the future. One day, one day she will be queen and she will be a far better ruler than he.

Thor declares Hela of Asgard his daughter. He closes the wing of rooms that once hid her from the world and shows her to all of his kingdom.

•*•^

In the centuries leading up to this, since the death of Loki, Asgard had locked itself away. Once the protector of all the nine realms, Thor’s home had pulled back and allowed the world to run itself. Thor would not change this, not even at the constant nagging of his advisors. Devoid of an expansive and loyal royal family, Asgard was stronger on its own and it would remain so until a better queen could take Thor’s place.

For what it’s worth Hela charms most of the senior palace officials. Either she’s the docile diplomatic princess they adore, or the passionate warrior queen in-the-making they slowly respect. Thor’s daughter proves herself quickly in terms of intelligence, battle prowess, and magical abilities. She is the best of her father. And the best of Thor himself.

Thor is not yet father to her. He can not be. Just as she remembers the comfort of his arms, she also remembers the coldness of his voice and his refusal to sometimes look at her and acknowledge who she is.

To Thor she had not always been Hela. For many decades, he had looked at his daughter and seen only Hela, Daughter of Loki. His brother was in everything she did and there were some reminders he could not bare. There were days he spent locked up in towers, ignoring her cries and pleas because he was too cowardly to ever do anything but reminisce. There were plays and games he refused to indulge, holidays he refused to celebrate. There were birthdays he forgot, gifts her never gave, all done in some misguided attempt to have her hate him. Because Thor was not a good man. He was a stupid, foolish oaf trying to make things right and he would never be worthy of the love Hela could give him.

She wears down his resolve regardless. Slips a hand into his and holds it with an immeasurable strength. She hugs him with the same intensity, burying her head into his chest and sleeping at his side. It was him she looked for, his room she snuck into when nightmares became too much and her sacred voice forced Thor to not look away. It was this Thor that came close to father, and it was this Thor that slowly became present in his day to day life with Hela. Thor holds her hand as they walk through the halls, lifts her up into his arms when she’s too tired to continue or simply too excited. He throws her up into the air on the best days, loves how her laugh echoes in the throne room as he attends the common pleas of his people and how it rings out with the leaves in the summer and the fall.

Her green eyes alight with joy in the spring and in the winter they spend hours in the snow, the girl almost impervious to the cold and Thor hiding his own weakness to it in order to make her happy. There is nothing Thor wouldn’t do to make her happy. He gives her everything she could ever want, everything Loki ever wanted; he gives her his very best self and bridges the gap he had created out of some self-hating, self-sabotaging delusion.

Eventually, Hela looks into his eyes and says dad. Not exactly daddy but not father either. Thor counts it as a win. He rejoices as she shows him every spell she can cast and tries every sword maneuver she knows on him. Hela is his daughter and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

•*•^

Eventually, centuries go by and the little girl he loves is not so little anymore. Thor reaches his 27thcentury and decides that Asgard is ready for a queen.

The process is slow. It starts with Hela being officially declared Crown Princess, a title Thor himself had never officially earned. She expands her powers, practices with Heimdall, fills in for Thor in boring bureaucratic meetings. She learns the lore of all the nine realms. When she’s ready for more, Thor disappears for weeks at a time in the woods with only Mjolnir for company. She leaves Hela a Princess Regent and people begin to see her as Queen.

By his 29th Century, Thor knows that though she is young, barely 15 centuries, she will be a far better king than he ever was at 14 centuries. Hela, Princess of Asgard becomes Hela, Queen of Asgard to the cheers and cacophony of people who once doubted her father. She is not Hela of Helheim, Hela, Goddess of Death as he believes fate and an uncaring Odin may have once consigned her to be.

For the first time in a long time, in the centuries he’s spent without his mother, father, brother and true friends outside of loyal advisors, Thor feels safe and happy. His heart is not fully healed, may never be, but seeing the person he’s raised take up the crown she was meant to have, it makes it feel as if his life and all its tragedies had a cosmic purpose.

•*•^

Thor is 33 centuries, now the King Father, when his life is destroyed.

There are whispers. Whispers Heimdall says that Idunn parrots.

They say the Allfather has awoken, severely weakened, to an Asgard cut off entirely from him and outside of diplomats, cut off from the nine realms. Odin and Frigga will return, they say, but the when is not entirely sure. Thor doesn’t believe their return changes anything. The people love Hela of Asgard more than they ever loved Odin Borson. Besides, he will be there to protect her as he has always done. And as he always thought he would.

Except.

There’s a break in at the palace vault. They almost steal the Casket of Ancient Winters.

And there are whispers.

Loki is alive and on Midgard.

Thor leaves behind a queen and starts a journey always foretold.


End file.
